the labors of the true critic are more essential to the author, even, than to the reader.

The worst in life, we are told, is compatible with the best in art. So too the worst in life is compatible with the best in humour.

A puppy is but a dog, plus high spirits, and minus common sense.

A vast deal of ingenuity is wasted every year in evoking the undesirable, in the careful construction of objects which burden life. Frankenstein was a large rather than an isolated example.

It was hard to speed the male child up the stony heights of erudition, but it was harder still to check the female child at the crucial point, and keep her tottering decorously behind her brother.

When the contemplative mind is a French mind, it is content, for the most part, to contemplate France. When the contemplative mind is an English mind, it is liable to be seized at any moment by an importunate desire to contemplate Morocco or Labrador.

It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.